More than a book

The review of the journalist Anastasia Kuzina to the book of Alena Kozlova, Nikolai Mikhailov, Irina Ostrovskaya, Irina Shcherbakova “The sign will not be erased. The fate of the Ostarbeters in letters, memoirs and oral stories ”(M.: Publishing House Ageytomesh, 2016)-finalist of the Enlightener Award.

The book “The sign will not be erased” telling about the fate of the Ostarbeters, no familiar laudatory epithets are suitable: “unique”, “amazing”, “masterpiece”. This is something more. Because this book is not only about how the life of millions of people has developed during the war, but also about how then for several decades these millions simply disappeared, disappeared, leaving no memory or trace of themselves. Fortunately, OST sign will not be erased. And today, with the help of employees of the Memorial, we can restore this part of our history.

It all started with the fact that in 1989, Germany decided to pay compensation for slave labor of people from Eastern Europe. The Germans turned to Russia, to the Memorial Society, to help them find the Ostarbeters, who had survived by that time. Soon in the newspaper "Week" a note appeared about this, and letters from former Ostarbeters began to come to the "Memorial". In a few weeks, more than 400 thousand letters came. But it is amazing that with such a number of living witnesses, they seemed to not exist in real life.

“... The fate of the eastern workers did not fit into the Soviet Stalin, and then the Brezhnev official picture of the Patriotic War,” the preface says. - They reminded that as a result of the most difficult miscalculations and crimes of the Soviet leadership, primarily Stalin himself, already in the fall of 1941, more than 60 million Soviet citizens found themselves in the territory occupied by the German army and its allies. A few months later, in the spring of 1942, the massive hijacked of youth began to work in Germany ... They were not considered either victims, participants, or more, veterans ... On the Victory Day, which was supposed to be for the day of memory of liberation, they felt superfluous: they had no place in the festive demonstrations, to which veterans went on, wearing their orders, having nourished their orders. And medals, they were not invited to speak to the schoolchildren, they did not send journalists to them ... "

The book consists of short letters of the “skeletons” to their homeland, a large number of personal photographs and interviews recorded by employees of the Memorial. And, despite the predictable severity of the content, it is readily easy to read. In some ways, the book is even like a well-illustrated textbook. Yes, she is a textbook - on the history of the forgotten and devoted generation of Ostarbeters.

“Many years ago, when we started conversations with former Ostarbeters, we knew their story only in general terms, we ourselves were in the power of stereotypes and could not imagine how difficult and, possibly, this attempt to close one of the last white spots in the history of the Second World War would be unrealistic.

We did not imagine the scale of this spot and the consequences of many years of silence of hundreds of thousands of people who never had a collective memory that they experienced ... "

The book begins with childhood memoirs: everyone has poverty; Often - the arrest of parents and an orphanage. And for those who lived in Ukraine, the main memory is hunger. Pavel Mikhailov (Zaporizhzhya region): “Our power has taken all the grain reserves. We searched everywhere, pitch mattresses pierced. They took everything out. Even a couple of kilograms of beans that the mother hid behind the icon, and they took. And there were six people in the family ... "

Then the war begins; The heroes of the book are 16-17 years old. Taissa Tolkacheva (Genichesk, Kherson region): “Who was evacuated? The authorities, all sorts of district committees, city committees. The chairmen of collective farms, party workers and their families - these in cars were evacuated. And no one even asked us, and in general did not even touch us. ”

Then - occupation, new orders, the destruction of Jews and gypsies. And in 1942, the main thing began - mass sending people to Germany, both by force and on recruitment. Nina Odolinskaya (April 1942): “It was unbearable to live, hungry, there was no question of studying, there was no work. <...> The front went further east, and therefore the soul covered the feeling of some kind of wild hopelessness. A trip to a recruitment to Germany seemed to be a real and only way out ... It calmed the consciousness that I would be provided with food and a roof over my head and, perhaps, I could help loved ones remaining in Odessa ... "

In Germany, the life of the "skeletons" developed differently. Some got into the working camps, others - to the owners. And there is no point in retelling something here: the pages and pages of the gloomy life of very young people are far from their homeland: hunger, cold, humiliation, illness, the total poverty of life, loneliness.

But it is really painful to read the book closer to the end when victory comes. This is probably the only example in world history, when the liberated prisoners instead of sympathy and help received accusations of betrayal. First-filtration camps and humiliating checks, then-voluntary and compulsory work. But for those who left for their homeland almost immediately, torment continued all their lives. Zoya Eliseeva: “We immediately realized: we are strangers, inferior, we cannot trust us. We only need to check, check and check. And they began to check us all: when they left, from where, with whom, who else left with you, where they were, what they did, when they returned, who freed it? ” People had to walk around the offices of various institutions for a long time and undergo interrogations, so that instead of a certificate of filtering to receive ordinary documents.

“Until the death of Stalin, the former Ostarbaiters remained suspicious people with a“ bad ”questionnaire, many were under the unspoken supervision of organs. Staying in Germany became an obstacle for further study. With their biography, even the most modest official career was practically impossible. And the former Ostarbaiters themselves - this was directly stated in their letters - all their life they tried not to mention anywhere that they were in Germany during the war ... "

It so happened that until the 1990s, Ostarbaiters did not tell anyone about their life in captivity, sometimes even family members. Many of them said that they were shameful for being stolen to Germany. Their first listeners were the employees of the Memorial. And now, reading this book, we can restore justice - to return the memory of these people.

Anastasia Kuzina